Program increment (PI) planning: Unlocking agile potential
Many business owners face challenges when implementing Agile at Scale, with one of the biggest hurdles being maintaining alignment across cross-functional agile teams.
The SaFE Scaled Agile Framework uses program increment (PI) planning meetings to ensure teams collaborate effectively and stay aligned with the company’s long-term objectives. PI planning brings together multiple teams to review and organize upcoming projects while providing visibility into delivery dates, dependencies, and timelines.
If you’re new to the SaFE Agile methodology or preparing for your first PI planning event, here’s what you need to know.
What is PI planning?
SaFE organizes multiple cross-functional agile teams into Agile Release Trains (ARTs) that work toward a common goal. PI planning sessions are time-boxed events held every 8–12 weeks, during which stakeholders set the ART's direction by identifying priorities, reviewing current goals, and addressing dependencies. These sessions typically last 1–2 days and result in a SaFE roadmap that guides product development and decision-making for the next iteration.
What is the goal of PI planning?
PI planning in agile is a structured communication process that informs everyone in the ART about each Scrum team’s upcoming plans. It synchronizes workflows and aligns the ART behind shared goals and objectives. Without the information generated during SaFE PI planning, two teams working on the same feature could uncover a critical dependency mid-sprint, requiring significant reworking and delaying the release.
In addition, PI planning:
Clarifies goals
Regular PI planning ensures that the ART’s objectives align with the company’s long-term strategy. It connects the team’s activities to organizational goals, improving alignment and boosting engagement.
Builds trust
As a collaborative process, SaFE PI planning fosters relationships and builds trust among the various Scrum teams.
Prioritizes backlogs
PI planning helps prioritize features and projects that contribute the most value to organizational goals, keeping the ART focused on high-impact activities.
Facilitates informed decisions
By setting clear goals for each increment, PI planning simplifies decision-making for ART leadership, enabling quicker and more effective problem-solving.
Enhances customer experience
The alignment and streamlined workflows created during PI planning increase flexibility, allowing teams to respond rapidly to customer feedback and improve the user experience.
In short, PI planning strategically aligns teams within the ART, providing insights into user needs and eliminating potential productivity or collaboration roadblocks.
Who should be involved in PI planning?
Key participants in PI planning include:
1. Release train engineer
The release train engineer (RTE) leads and coaches stakeholders through the planning event. They are responsible for managing, facilitating, and overseeing the planning process, ensuring the session runs smoothly.
2. Scrum master
The Scrum Master works with the RTE to guide the group through PI planning step by step. Their responsibilities include:
Facilitating planning processes
Reviewing team capacity
Ensuring workloads are realistic
Aligning work with organizational goals
Managing time
Identifying dependencies
Offering insights during breakout sessions
3. Product manager
The product manager steers the PI process by defining the product’s vision and key milestones while offering insights into customer needs. They also review the finalized increment roadmap to ensure it aligns with delivering value to the end user.
4. Systems architects
Systems architects provide technical expertise and guidance throughout the PI planning process.
5. Developers
Development teams within the ART play a key role in designing, testing, and refining the product. They contribute to breakout session planning by refining user stories, identifying risks, and collaborating with the product manager to finalize PI goals and objectives.
PI planning agenda and best practices
Establishing a clear agenda with opportunities for discussion is crucial to ensuring that all necessary details are revealed during PI planning. The product manager begins the session with an update on the current business context and shares the strategic vision for the upcoming increment.
Once everyone has a solid understanding of the background, the work begins.
Agenda
1. Product vision
The product manager outlines 10 key features or priority items from the backlog for development by the ART and discusses changes from the previous PI planning meeting.
2. Planning context
The RTE sets process criteria and establishes goals and objectives for the session.
3. Team breakouts
Individual teams or Scrums break away for a time-boxed session to estimate capacity and draft a development plan for the upcoming increment.
4. Draft review
Each Scrum team presents the results of the breakout session – including capacity, PI objectives, risks, and dependencies – and the rest of the group offers feedback.
5. Management review
The RTE, product manager, system architects, and Scrum Masters review the draft, addressing potential challenges such as:
Limited scope
Resource allocation
Conflicting dependencies
6. Risk assessment
The teams work together to classify increment risks into five categories.
Resolved: The team determines the issue is no longer a risk.
Owned: A team member is assigned to manage the unresolved risk.
Accepted: The team determines the risk is unavoidable and must be accepted.
Mitigated: The team determines a course of action to reduce risk impact.
Confidence vote: After assessing all the risks, stakeholders vote to gauge confidence in the ART’s ability to address them.
7. Refinement
Teams or Scrums hold another time-boxed session to rework their draft plans, address risks, and boost confidence in meeting the increment’s objectives.
8. Retrospective
Before closing the PI planning event, the RTE leads a retrospective to review what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve for the next iteration.
Best practices
The following practices will help PI planning stakeholders get the most out of the session.
1. Event preplanning
Create a checklist of everything needed for successful SaFE PI planning, including:
A list of required stakeholders
Documentation from previous PI planning events, including backlog lists and roadmaps
A location with enough space to allow teams to move around and hold breakout sessions
Equipment needed to stream the proceedings if holding a virtual PI planning event or accommodating remote team members
Project management software to help Scrum teams plan efficiently
The finalized agenda
2. Make it fun
Avoid a monotonous session. Icebreakers and social lunches can help the group relax, interact, and engage more effectively.
3. Set clear goals and objectives
Establish clear outcomes for PI planning from the start so stakeholders understand event expectations.
4. Record each session
While live PI planning is most effective, recording sessions allows absent team members to review and discuss outcomes.
5. Time block and track sessions
Use time tracking to ensure all critical topics are covered without missing anything important.
6. Leverage templates
Use templates for project management, backlog, and sprint planning to structure discussions and capture key insights.
Enhancing PI planning with Tempo
Implementing a scaled agile framework is labor-intensive, but organizations can rely on Tempo tools to ease the workload, allowing teams to focus on adhering to agile principles.
Whether planning the outcomes of a PI or sprint meeting, Tempo’s Strategic Roadmaps simplifies the visualization of product development, priorities, and dependencies.
Capacity Planner is an essential tool for Scrum Masters, streamlining team capacity and resource management across individual user stories or entire epics. It also provides full visibility across the Agile Release Train, making resource sharing and performance optimization straightforward.
Tempo products fully integrate with Jira, enabling users to customize dashboards and consolidate issues, data, and projects into a single, easy-to-use interface.
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